Brian Zubert

Born and bred as a developer, with a genuine interest in helping others and fostering relationships. I joined BlackBerry not long after the first colour screen devices were introduced, and over the years, I've had many technological firsts: • Worked on the first GPS turn-by-turn navigation applications for BlackBerry. • Delivered the first ever streaming music and streaming video applications to BlackBerry. • Delivered the first ever 3D games to BlackBerry. • Delivered the first ever augmented reality applications to BlackBerry. Since then, I've had many management firsts, which led to explosive career growth (4 promotions in 6 years): • First management experience, a small team of 5 dev consultants. • First expanded management experience, a team of 20+ people spanning expertise in Java, HTML5, AIR, C/C++, and Android. • First time managing explosive team growth, internationally hiring 16 people in 10 months. • First international management experience, a team of 30+ developers in 6 countries, 3 continents, and 9 time zones. • First exposure to NPS, which when applied to my own management skills, my global team of direct and indirect reports scored me at NPS +65. To paraphrase Alec Saunders' LinkedIn profile, in the 6 quarters from lead up to BlackBerry 10 through to 1 year post-launch: • Applications in BlackBerry World grew 1650% from 16,000 to 265,000. • Developer base grew 921% from 7,600 to over 70,000. • Developer sentiment moved from profoundly negative (NPS -43) to strongly positive (NPS +46). • BlackBerry 10 launch featured the largest app ecosystem ever seen for first gen product launch, with over 70,000 apps on day one. I've been blessed with the opportunity to work with some of the biggest & most influential companies in the world as well as some of the smallest & most innovative startups. Now I'm thrilled to be giving back to startups in the Waterloo Region via Communitech and the startup services team!